Knowing full well that the piece would go out under Mr. Zakaria’s name, the two-time National Magazine Award finalist says, he wrote the five-paragraph piece, never discussing it with the putative author. “He made some changes, maybe. But he didn’t say, ‘Do this and don’t tell anyone.’ It came to me through channels.”

Tony Emerson was managing editor of Newsweek International, which Zakaria edited. He tells D'Addario, "In team journalism there’s a lot of debates over who deserves the byline. It sounds to me like he could have pitched in with Fareed and is angry he wasn’t credited for his contributions.”

For what it's worth, I spoke with Adler last Wednesday after an anonymous tip pointed me to him, and he didn't sound in the least angry about Zakaria; "This happened all the time," he told me about byline-swapping. He said he had "no firsthand knowledge" of Zakaria's byline landing atop anyone else's work, and said "I don’t consider it a mortal sin."

"It’s not clear to me anyone was hurt by this," Adler said.

Adler told D'Addario he thought Newsweek's business side had promised Zakaria's byline to advertisers for the issue. “It was an advertising vehicle, a revenue-producing deal made by the business side at a time when Newsweek was desperately trying to keep its head above water,” former Newsweeker Fred Guterl told D'Addario. Guterl also said he remembered Zakaria writing the intro.

I wonder if it really is possible to do so many things at once: columns, daily blog posts, a full schedule of television appearances and Internet videos, speeches around the country (and the world), and books intended to make a splash. There are also outside activities (or jobs) that take administrative or editorial time. The aggregation of all these activities can be enormously lucrative, but there is also a competitiveness among the cohort -- and their principal employers -- that seems to drive them to take on more roles than frankly makes sense.

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Andrew Beaujon reported on the media for Poynter from 2012 to 2015. He was previously arts editor at TBD.com and managing editor of Washington City Paper. He's the author of the 2006 book "Body Piercing Saved My Life," about Christian rock and evangelical Christian culture.